Robin could see the hesitation in Ana’s expression. “I have to. I don’t have another choice.” Both knew she did have another choice that she ignored. But the repercussions of being ejected from the pediatric oncology unit were so great that Robin could hardly consider it a viable option.
And it wasn’t just her life at stake. If she didn’t file her findings before someone else submitted a report to CPS on the Wrights, Nancy would be arrested, and Jacob might be in a foster home before the next day.
“I understand,” Ana said, slowly. “Send what you’ve got to the hospital and let me have the card so I can start our case file on Blackbird.”
A knot of worry formed in Robin’s stomach. “To clear the Wrights and myself, I can’t just report my findings to the hospital. That wouldn’t fulfill my legal obligations.”
She could see the same realization dawning over Ana. “If you’re blaming Blackbird’s supplements for the disease and the vectors, you’ve got to submit the report to the FDA.”
Robin nodded and swallowed hard. “And the local police.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.” She paused. “But it’s not as though the turncoats in your department don’t already know what we’re up to. They discovered the pill in your possession.”
Wringing her hands together, Ana exhaled. “And it would be silly to think they don’t have a connection to or knowledge of the attempted mugging along with the lab results.”
“Right. So what can it hurt?” Robin knew the question sounded naïve. It was a weak attempt at downplaying the danger they were already in.
“I suppose it would be nice to stab this knife into their side. Let them know we’re on their asses and not letting them get away with whatever it is that’s going on,” Ana said. . “I know I’m going to regret this later...but do it.”
It took Robin an hour to type up her report and summarize her suspicions while clearing the Wrights of any culpability. After attaching the output from the various assays they’d done to characterize the contaminants in the Blackbird supplements, she sent everything to the hospital and FDA. Her hand hovered above the submission form to Baltimore PD’s Bio Unit.
“Do it,” Ana said. “There’s no turning back now.”
Robin hit the button and tossed the comm card to Ana. “That’s that. You do your magic and see what you can scrounge up on Blackbird.”
***
Ana hadn’t wanted Robin to submit anything to the Bio Unit. But she could tell Robin would be distracted, haunted by failing to support her patients and potentially sabotaging her vocation as a doctor.
She knew what risking everything felt like. By aligning herself with Chris and Jordan and isolating herself from the department, she too had taken a leap into the abyss, propelled by faith alone she was right in doing so.
And while she’d started out determined to unveil the mystery behind Ross Garret’s murder at the Baltimore Telegraph along with Senator Sharp’s assassination, Robin had inserted a wrench into her plans with her own troubles.
Yet the more they discovered, the more it seemed as though everything were connected through the common Blackbird Organics thread.
Except for the senator’s murder, every event, every obstacle they’d faced had something to do with those tiny blue pills carrying a deadly misfolded protein. It had seemed logical that Vincent and the remnants of Tallicor—or Sobek as they were now known—had been behind it. They’d wanted to control the biotech industry in the Mid-Atlantic and New England area, along with anywhere else their tendrils of influence would reach.
And they seemed to have the most to lose if the senator spoke out against them. Chris and Jordan’s statement that Vincent would tell them who the real culprit was shook her staunch self-assuredness that Vincent was the man they wanted. Could Chris and Jordan have been fooled? Had they been subverted by Vincent, tricked into believing a promise the man had no intention of keeping?
She shuddered. Worse, maybe Vincent had convinced Chris and Jordan to join him. She yearned for that suspicion to be wrong. The two former criminals had been honest and helpful enough. At least, she thought they had. She couldn’t come up with a legitimate reason to distrust them.
Then again, she’d thought her department and the men and women she worked with to be infallible, morally conscious upholders of the law. She’d been wrong once. Who’s to say she couldn’t be wrong again?
In the corner of the lab, Robin rested in a cot. The bags under her eyes had gotten darker and more pronounced, yet her energy seemed to persist like a mountain spring. Ana had hardly been able to convince the doctor to take a nap and catch up on the sleep she’d forfeited over the past couple days.
She’d promised the doctor she could do this work alone and ceased her introspection. She projected a note-taking application from Robin’s card along with a Net surfing browser. Scanning through any available information, she constructed a map of all entities—prominent people, corporations, government organizations—with ties to Blackbird.
Time passed unnoticed as she delved through legal proceedings, SEC filings, news stream stories, and publicly available FDA reports. A spider web of connections stretched across a holoprojection, documenting all her findings. The faux windows of the underground laboratory glowed as brightly as they had before, giving no indication of whether day had passed into night.
Robin yawned, stretched, and then joined Ana.
“What’s this?” She pointed to a central node in the web.
Ana squinted at the holoprojection and zoomed in. “Advance Industries, a conglomerate, owns Blackbird Organics.”
“Advance Industries? Pretty boring name.”
Ana chuckled. “Seems like huge corporations prefer to let their smaller brands do the talking as they stay out of the limelight. Anyway, they’re all over the place, the parent organization for hundreds of small companies in all types of industries.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Everything from security consulting to virtual reality software to medicine.”
“Medicine?”
“Blackbird Organics isn’t the only nutrition- or medical-related group they own.”
“What about Sobek? Is Vincent’s group part of Advance?” Robin asked.
“Negative. Sobek, at least, seems to be pretty much independent of Advance’s network.”
“Out of curiosity, can you show me any medical companies under Advance’s umbrella?”
“Sure thing.” Ana typed in a couple of commands, and the spider web before them transformed. Several nodes jumped out, highlighted in green. “This is the list I have so far. I think it’s comprehensive.”
“I see.” Robin scanned the companies’ names and descriptions. She mouthed each of the names as she did. As she read one, her lips stopped moving, and her mouth fell open. “Protiomics.” She backed away from the web, a wild look in her eyes. “Protiomics. They’re the developers and manufacturers of Styryldine.”
“Styryl—what?”
“Styryldine. It’s the only FDA–approved drug capable of reversing prion disease. I used it to help the Wrights. Recommended it to Tanner, too, for his patients.”
They both considered the potential ramifications of this shared connection under Advance Industries. It might not mean anything, merely a coincidence.
Or it could mean everything.
They didn’t have time to discuss the matter further. The shattering of broken glass from the floor above them echoed down the stairwell. A cacophony of footsteps followed.
Ana took the comm card in her hand, the holoprojections vanishing. She never should’ve let Robin submit those reports.
They—whoever they were—must’ve tracked the location from where the documents had been sent. Ana thought they’d been careful about disabling any geopositioning data stored in any of the files or caches on the comm card. But she was no tech demigod; she wasn’t perfect.
She unholstered her pistol and clicked off the safety. “I don’t think getting out of her
e is going to be easy.”
“Trust me, in my field, nothing ever is.” Robin pulled out her stunner. “I spend my days taking out microscopic tumors and cells. How hard can it be to stun a couple big humans?”
There was that inexhaustible energy again, that unshakable perseverance.
The clamoring footsteps poured through the doorway at the top of the stairs. Robin had closed the door on their way down, but they must not have engaged the sealing mechanism that locked the door shut. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have heard the voices drifting under the gap where the hidden door met the concrete floor.
The single stairway up provided their only known exit. Though the lab had been high tech enough, Jordan hadn’t built the secret facilities for any legal reasons and thus hadn’t bothered making it fire-code compatible by including an emergency escape.
But her mind raced. Jordan was a smart man; he must’ve been aware of the risks surrounding his business when he’d constructed the lab. There must be an alternative exit, a fail-safe. Right?
Chapter 28
The lights of Baltimore City glowed in the distance as the plane descended. Rain streamed across the fuselage windows. When Chris had agreed to the trip with Jordan, he’d never planned on returning without a more definitive resolution to the problems they faced. Maybe it had been naïve to expect locating Vincent would end all their troubles in the States.
He gripped his handrest when the plane landed hard on the tarmac. How long would it be before Vincent would tell them their target?
Jordan’s comm card buzzed, drawing Chris’s attention. Jordan read the message and stifled a visible gasp. His forehead wrinkled as he tapped out a response.
“Vincent?”
Jordan shook his head. “Robin and Ana. They’re in the old labs.” He spoke in a low voice. “Someone’s broken into the lab. Tracked them down.”
“We need to get off.” Swallowing the lump in his throat, Chris unclicked his seatbelt. The plane taxied to the terminal, and perspiration beaded on his forehead. His pulse quickened at each passing second, and he chewed hard on his bottom lip. “We’ve got to do something.”
“We’ve got to wait, my man. Don’t act too crazy, or the TSA will throw us in an interrogation room for God knows how long.”
“Screw that.” Sweat trickled down Chris’s neck. “Are they running?”
“Can’t run anywhere, I’m afraid. They’re stuck. But I told them where a damn good hiding place was.”
“Damn it. If Vincent’s bugged our cards—”
Jordan glared. If that was true, the cat was out of the bag now.
“He knows where they are, where they’re hiding. I still don’t trust that asshole. Even if it wasn’t Vincent, you said someone tracked them down. Hiding isn’t going to be of much help if some criminal can read every goddamned message we send.” A woman with wiry white hair shot Chris a disapproving look. He stared back until she turned away.
“Don’t worry, my man. I was as cryptic as possible.” He showed Chris the message. “These two are smart. They’ll understand. Even if one of Vincent’s lackeys is monitoring their cards, thugs with guns usually don’t take those jobs because of their IQ.”
“Usually.” Chris arched an eyebrow. The plane jolted to a stop, and he unbuckled his seatbelt. “But I don’t want to waste any time.”
***
“Damn it. We don’t have time for riddles.” Ana aimed the pistol toward the stairwell.
Robin crouched beside her, stunner in one hand, comm card in the other. “This thing’s compromised. Jordan knew he couldn’t risk outing our escape plan.”
“You tell me what it means, then.”
The footsteps grew more frantic. Crashes of broken glass, cabinets flung open, and shelves crashing down filtered under the door.
“I’m going to give us a bit more time.” Ana’s fingers trembled, and she sprinted up the stairs. Her pulse throbbed in her ear. She prayed they didn’t discover the secret door before she locked it.
But no one swung through with guns blazing.
She slammed a hand against a button near the door and exhaled. The automated door hissed into place and let out a metallic click that echoed down the stairs.
Adrenaline surged through her vessels anew. “Shit.”
Though now muffled, the loud shouts and footsteps drew closer. Ana pressed her ear to the door. A sudden pounding caused her to jump back, and she raced down to Robin.
“That backfired.”
Robin nodded but focused on the comm card’s display. “Jordan says ‘we may hide beyond a cell’s intermediary journey before falling to eternal slumbers.’”
“The hell does that mean?” The raucous slamming against the door ceased. A single walloping thump took its place. They’d found something to use as a battering ram. A shiver snaked its way down her spine and into her fingers. The healing wounds in her right shoulder tingled.
“I got it!” Robin scrambled toward a towering white freezer in the back. She swung the door open, and a freezing gust washed out. Metal shelves, covered in frost, filled the chilling beast’s innards. “Minus eighty degrees. This is it!”
Ana’s brow scrunched together in scrutiny. “What are we looking for? There’s no way we can hide in there.”
“Obviously.” Robin picked through the shelves and tossed out blocks of frozen samples. “There’s got to be a button or something in here.” Then she stopped. “No, no, no. Jordan said beyond.”
A squeal of tearing metal caused the hairs on Ana’s neck to rise. “Come on, doc. We’re running out of time.”
“I know, I know.” She slammed the freezer door shut and jumped to its side. “Help push!”
Ana jumped beside Robin and leaned into the freezer. The barely adequate wheels beneath it groaned, but it moved.
“There!” Robin pointed to a single gray square on the whitewashed wall. She pressed it, but nothing happened.
“The comm card!”
Robin placed it against the spot, and a section of the wall slid back, revealing a narrow passageway. “Let’s go.”
“I can’t. You go.” Ana eyed the freezer and the samples strewn about.
“You have to come with.”
“Who’s going to put the freezer back in place?” She pictured how she’d hidden from Gordon Huff when he’d helped incinerate the evidence room, how she’d been overpowered in Robin’s house. The doctor had saved her life. It was her turn to repay the favor. “Besides, I don’t understand a damn thing Jordan said in that message, though you apparently did. They hacked your card. They must’ve already seen it.” She stomped. “I’ll pretend like this is the hiding place and it was just me here all along.”
“You can’t. They’ll kill you.”
“They’ll kill us both.” She motioned to the passageway. “If I don’t get that freezer back in place, if they don’t find someone down here, they’ll tear the whole place apart. What good will that be?”
“No.” Robin’s mouth hung open. Another screech of grinding metal echoed into the underground lab. “We need your help.”
“You don’t. You know everything I do now.” She grabbed the comm card from Robin. “And you’ve got families, a whole ward of kids, waiting for your safe return. I don’t have anyone.” When she flashed the card in front of the gray panel, the door shut before Robin could protest.
Ana replaced the shelves and trays of frozen samples. She threw her shoulder into the freezer and grunted. It slid into place. Her chest heaving, sweat dripping across her forehead, she took a knee behind a lab counter. It gave her a clear line of sight toward the stair opening.
She cracked the comm card and let the pieces fall. If she didn’t make it, if they weren’t satisfied with bringing her down, and they suspected they’d find the doctor here, too, she didn’t want to give them the key to the safe room. She still didn’t understand how Robin had solved Jordan’s riddle but was glad she had.
The doctor needed to live; she did not.
<
br /> Metal screamed in protest again. This time, a heavy white freezer, dented and marred, pierced the door. It clanged down the steps and smashed against the concrete floor. A head peeked through the fresh opening, and Ana fired.
Chapter 29
Robin ran along the passageway. A few lone lights illuminated her path between concrete walls. An open barred door lay at the end. Brushing past it, she stood in an empty room. It appeared no different than a prison cell. It wasn’t quite the safe room she’d anticipated.
The unmistakable report of gunfire sounded from outside. She trudged back to the door and flinched each time another volley of shots exploded.
It hadn’t taken her long to interpret Jordan’s cryptic message. She didn’t spend an extensive amount of time performing lab research, but she had enough experience dealing with experimental cell populations.
Hide beyond a cell’s intermediary journey before falling to eternal slumbers.
When she needed to store cells for weeks or months at a time, she used a process aptly called “freezing cells down.” She isolated cells from their plastic culture dishes and put them in plastic vials with a special solution that prevented them from dying when frozen. Then she placed the vials in a minus-eighty-degree freezer for twenty-four hours before immersing them in liquid nitrogen for long-term storage.
The minus-eighty-degree freezer was the “intermediary” step before preserving the cells for future use.
More gunfire erupted.
None of this knowledge of cells or laboratory procedures seemed to matter with Ana stuck out there.
She pressed an ear to the door. More yelling, more gunfire. How many rounds did Ana have before she would run out?
Robin gripped her stunner. She should’ve given the weapon to Ana. The detective needed it more than her.
A single scream.
The gunfire ceased.
The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3 Page 68